Friday, July 27, 2007

The last two nights have been unusually humid for Southern California, making what would normally be a pleasant (or at least tolerable) temperature, around 78, uncomfortable enough to motivate us to turn on a fan, but not the A/C.

Under these conditions, we’ve reviewed some of the TV shows we’d DVRed (well, why can’t I make that a verb? Wordsmiths everywhere have already approved “TiVo” as a verb.)

Big Love was the first on our list, so we watched it. Several months ago, I asked a Mormon friend if he’d watched it yet; even though he hadn’t, he certainly had heard a lot about it, and wasn’t exactly that interested in seeing it—particularly due to the polygamy angle. I told him that I thought he should check it out—first, because he’s extremely open-minded when it comes to theatre anyway, and second, because he wasn’t likely to find much to be offended by in the show.

I told him that Big Love proved that one wife is more than enough, and that I would never want to have to handle one, or in the case of Big Love’s central family, two additional wives. He laughed and agreed.

We followed Entourage last night, and this show is generally so well crafted—from writing to acting to direction—though there were moments of tedium and puzzlement in the episode we watched. Ultimately, I wondered if Entourage exposes an extreme segment of Hollywood in the way that Big Love does of Mormons. Yes, yes, I’m sure that characters in Entourage can be found there, but I suspect much of it is overblown for comic effect.

We’re big fans of Deadwood, and looked forward to David Milch’s new series, John from Cincinnati. We’ve tried hard to like it, but find that it really falls flat—not that there aren’t some redeeming qualities. But largely, it’s boring in a way that Deadwood never was and lacks the larger-than-life characters that dominated the post-modern Western and made it so compelling.

About Me

Rick Stein is Executive Director of Arts Orange County, the leader in building appreciation, participation and support for the arts and arts education throughout Orange County.
ArtsOC operates SparkOC.com, Orange County's most comprehensive online arts & cultural events resource and produces the annual Imagination Celebration and Orange County Arts Awards. ArtsOC also serves as the official local arts agency of the County of Orange and state-local partner of the California Arts Council.